Re: James Cooke Brown on SVO order (Sorry, sent it incomplete yesterday)

[C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK]

(John posted some text by JCB justifying SVO word order)

It is remarkable how weak these arguments are, from the perspective of 25
years later.


Consider the following.

1. The major justification was in terms of imperatives. This was a strong
argument as long as "the only way of defining imperatives that is
consistent with the other patterns of an uninflected language" was to omit
the leading argument. But as John points out, we have an elegant and
flexible alternative method.  (JCB's original argument about imperatives
stressed the importance of minimal morphological material in them, and gave
examples from natural languages; but in fact there are plenty of contrary
examples with more morphology in them, such as polite imperatives in
German "gehen sie!".)

2. Given that the omitted first place now signals an observative rather than
an imperative, the argument becomes feeble. Even if observatives had
continued to be used as apparently intended, statements such as "there
is apparently little scope for long-windedness in .... drawing the hearer's
attention to things in the environment" are highly dubious. It is true that
there are short observatives ("Delicious!") but equally there are long and
tortuous ones ("A man on a unicycle eating cream cakes!").
Furthermore, I observe that 'observatives' are not in practice limited to this
use in current Lojban writing and speaking, but that lojbo feel free to omit
the x1 in just the same way as they do any other argument. Indeed, constructions
like
        "cumki falenu ...."
(it is possible that ....)
where the x1 is postposed by an explicit x1 marker ('fa'), are syntactically
equivalent to observatives, and not unusual with words like 'cumki'.

I would analyse the current situation in Lojban thus:

i) A bridi consists of a string consisting of zero or more terms (optionally
tagged sumti) and one selbri. The selbri may occur first, last, or between
any two terms.
ii) The case where the selbri comes first has some special properties of
interpretation (below), and is therefore treated as a special construction,
called, for historical reasons, 'observative'.
iii) An untagged sumti S is interpreted as follows (ignore all terms
        tagged with BAI, tense or FIhO in this):
        a) if the preceding sumti is tagged with an explicit positional
        marker (FA) indicating the Xn place of the selbri, or is interpreted
        by recursive application of these rules as filling the Xn place,
        S fills the X(n+1) place.
        b) if no sumti precedes, S fills the x1 place EXCEPT IN THE CASE
        OF AN OBSERVATIVE when it fills the x2 place.
iv) (a stylistic or discourse observation) a syntactic observative (with
x1 unstated) is often appropriate for uses that might be referred to
stylistically as observatives, such as "kukte" ("delicious!"). But it is
equally useful where the x1 is omitted because pragmatically reconstructable
(for example in narrative: "la maik mu'o klama .i rinsa mi'a" ("Mike arrived.
[He] greeted us") ) or for structural reasons to do with clause weight
("cumki falenu loi xarju cu vofli da'i" = [it is] possible that pigs might
fly).

Thus, while observatives currently exist as a distinct grammatical structure
in Lojban, they are distinguished only by a special rule of default
interpretation. The argument originally advanced in respect of imperatives
really does not seem to have any weight once transposed.

The second argument advanced was in respect of selgadri ("specified
descriptions"). Remarkably, this argument is actually stronger
in respect of Lojban than it was for Loglan (at least when I knew it, in the
late 70's) because Loglan then had a series of words that meant
        befe, befi, befo, befu
i.e. the links indicated the place of the following argument. (There was no
'bei' equivalent). Given this, his argument that "the give the horse John"
could not be interpreted as "The giver of the horse to John" because there
was an omitted argument, is simply false.
In current Lojban, the argument does have some weight, since "be"/"bei" are
merely syntactic glue, and do not specify the role of the following term.
However, it is not convincing, for the following reason:

At present, as sketched above, there is a rule of interpretation which says
that if the first unmarked sumti in a bridi follows the selbri, it is to
be taken as the X2, not the X1. There is no a priori reason not to apply
the same rule to linkargs - except that it would be simpler, because there
are only following sumti.


In short, a VSO version of Lojban could be created by making two changes
to interpretation, and no changes to syntax, viz:

1) In a bridi, the first untagged sumti is always the X1, whether it precedes
or follows the selbri
2) In a selbri with linkargs, the first untagged sumti is the X2, and the
 meaning of the selbri as a tanrypau or selgadrypau is the X1. To specify the
X1 (meaningless in a selgadri), FA must be used.

The first removes a complexity from the current rule, the second inserts it
back in elsewhere.

The effects on usage would be:

        Current                                 VSO
        =======                                 ===
1. Normal bridi with leading arguments would not be affected:
        mi viska ta                             viska mi ta
                                        or      mi viska ta

2. True observatives with no positional arguments would not be affected:
        kukte                                   kukte
        carvi vi lei bartu                      carvi vi lei bartu
   or   vi lei bartu ku carvi           or      vi lei bartu ku carvi

3. True observatives with following arguments would require a FA:
        batke le gerku                          batke fele gerku
                                        or      batke ta le gerku
                                        or      ta batke le gerku

4. Bridi with omitted x1 would require a FA:
        .i suksa bacru di'e                     .i suksa bacru fedi'e
                                        or      .i suksa bacru ri di'e
                                        or      .i ri suksa bacru di'e

5. Selgadri with linkargs would not be affected:
        le batke be le gerku                    le batke be le gerku

Of the two patterns which would require change, I believe 3. is very rare.
4. is undoubtedly common in current writing; but it is also very common
to omit the X2, even when there is an X3 - we are used to using FA a great
deal.


I am not actually advocating this change. But I think it would be perfectly
workable, as well as slightly more elegant. But the arguments against it
are very weak indeed.

                Colin

ps some further observations on current Lojban:
1.
I assume that a bridi which has tagged terms (but not FA) preceding the selbri,
and untagged ones after is still technically an observative, and interpreted
according to the observative rule:
ie
        ne'i le purdi ga'a mi mu'i leza'i birti kei preti ta mi
means
        In the garden, watched by me, in order to be certain, (something was)
        a question about that to me.
rather than
        .... that was a question about me.
Thus my account above is not complete.

2. Thus the observative rule applies when there are no untagged or FA-tagged
sumti preceding the selbri. This is a different rule from that for CU: CU is
permitted if and only if there is at least one preceding term, of any kind.
I have more than once tripped over this rule - I don't see why you should not
be permitted to use CU with an initial selbri if you wish -  but as it stands
there is a rule, and these two rules which you might have expected to coincide
in their application do not. (On the other hand, one is purely syntactic, and
the other interpretive, so there is no a priori reason why they should agree).